Image enhancement has been the subject of a large body of patent art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,606,625 discloses a system for colorizing black and white film in which interpolative techniques are used to reduce the number of frames which have to be individually colorized.
Another example of a prior art image enhancement is U.S. Pat. No. 4,907,075 which discloses a method for selecting a limited number of presentation colors from a larger palette for a selected image. A three dimensional color histogram of an image is generated and a first color is selected based upon the color occurring most frequently in the image. Subsequent presentation colors are selected by choosing one at a time those colors having the highest weighted frequency of occurrence wherein the weighting is such that colors closest to the previously selected color are weighted very little while colors furthest away from the selected color are weighted the most.
Still another example of an image enhancement system is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,072 which discloses a system and method for color enhancing an image or a series of images such as a motion picture by digitally capturing the images, interactively defining masks corresponding to objects in the images having similar hues, creating regions from these masks, and for each region, defining a color transfer function for converting image gray-scale information to unique values of hue, luminance, and saturation. The gray scale values within each region are then processed through that region's color transfer function, and the resulting colors applied to the image and stored for later retrieval and display.
Still another example of an imaging system is U.S. Pat. No. 5,041,992 which discloses a system and method for interactive design of user manipulable graphic elements. The system allows a user to create and manipulate graphic elements that can be subsequently employed to create a program.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,041,995 discloses a method for controlling the exposure used to print a developed film negative. The patent pertains to inspection of the negative film medium after the film has been processed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,554,460 discloses a photodetector automatic adaptive sensitivity system for controlling the exposure of a scanned image during the electronic scanning of the object.
None of these prior art patents or any other prior art that applicant is aware of disclose a method or system for enhancing film development through the application of electronic imaging technology.